Teacher Resources: Wheat and Corn

Okay, I'll admit it.

I've been procrastinating on blogging. I push it back and back on my schedule every night until time slips away and I'm too tired and I just go to bed. Why? Because I don't have the energy to write a long chirpy post. Then today I realized: there's nothing that says my blog posts have to be many paragraphs long, detailed, and upbeat. They can simply be notes from the day as to what we did that worked, or a book, website, or other resource that I want to share with my fellow homeschoolers and teachers. Labeling it as "a place to make teacher notes" in my mind instead of a sort of in-depth journal writing exercise takes some of the stress off me to be wonderful and I can Keep It Simple.

Keeping It Simple, as we all know, is the key to Success and Staying Positive when you are juggling a million things.

So I am going to keep the posts short. Each afternoon I'm always thinking, I should put that in my blog...

What was it today?

We are doing the Montessori Third Great Lesson and I stopped yesterday at the point where early man developed agriculture. What are the Great Lessons? They are one of the ONLY things I really love about Montessori and it's the only time the Mont teacher presents content through storytelling. (In Waldorf, these notes would be appropriate for the 3rd grade F & G block.)

The Dig magazine October 2009 issue focuses on Food and has a great article about bread baking in Ancient Egypt.

You can get Hard Red Spring Wheat Berries from Bob's Red Mill (or online for $1.99)and grind them in a mortar and pestle to make your own whole wheat flour. Pass around store bought flour first so that kids can see, once they've begun grinding, that they are making the real thing! It is so cool for them to see they can produce an actual "real" food.

I found the book Corn Is Maize (Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2)at the National Museum of the American Indian (our field trip on Friday) and it's wonderful! Perfect for early Elem.

We painted a field of corn today for wet-on-wet watercolor painting. Whole paper yellow, then blue at the bottom for the ground, then the corn plants in red. Do the central stalk first, then begin at the bottom to make the leaves. Corn leaves are distinctive and go up then drop down and out at a kind of shoulder.

Tomorrow we make corn husk dolls.